Legs and Ravens

by JP Vallières

My wife carried me piggy-back through deep valleys, over several mountains, and through raging waters. My mushy head slept on her broad shoulder. I was mostly not there. My legs ended at the knees.

“Where are we headed?” Most likely I couldn’t talk, but she knew the question was there, between us.

“Ha! Wouldn’t you like to know?” she said, laughing.

“I do want to know.”

“Remember when we were young?”

“I remember so little.”

“When your legs were strong. You carried me whenever we made love and when I was hurt.”

“What’s to know?” I said.

“To know, to know, to know,” she said, pinching her nose, trying to stop the laughter.

*

While wading through deep snow she became pregnant four times. Perhaps it was the wind and cold weaving in and out. Or the perfect storms bending between us.

“Oh, all these kidos!” I said as I slept.

The children hung onto my wife’s four braids. When they were hungry they swung around to latch on to a breast. My wife laughed and trudged through the cold. The cold melted my spine. I had no form.

*

During the journey I dreamt about getting my feelings hurt by friends and loved ones. All I wanted was to be liked.

“Have you seen my mother?” I asked.

“Oh, sweetie, you forget. She died three summers past.”

“No, no,” I said. “My mother.”

My wife laughed again as she plucked icy raspberries from the bush. She chewed the berries and spit them into my mouth. She also sucked snails from their shells.

“Protein makes me whistle,” I said. I whistled an old song. “Do you know this song?”

“That’s the sound of rain, dear,” she said, almost apologizing.

*

The children’s joy grew. They were wonderfully behaved. When they were brave they climbed the cliffs and walked the ridges.

We came to a ravine and gazed down over the white granite. Trees lined the rocks. Light came through and reflected off a waterfall in the distance. I could not hold my head up, not yet, but they told me, the children, they said it was good, that everything was good. I believed them but forgot the meaning.

 *

And what did the ravine say? My guess is it never saw me. By then, in the mountains, I was mostly soft bones with some tender strands of cartilage.

“I am strong,” said my wife. “I will protect you.”

“I think I remember you,” I said. “We made bonfires and read books on the couch.”

“You went to the library after a long day at the office,” she said.

“Books! Books!” shouted the children. They had books in their pockets. They read them out loud at the same time. Some of the little words skipped down the rocks.

*

When we got to the saddle of the mountain my wife rested under a tree.

She cried. She was tired and wanted me to disappear.

“Sometimes I want to drop you in a crevasse,” she said.

“You’d do that for me?” I asked.

The children were snoring and whispering. Their books were getting older now. They needed new books.

“I will die!” I said, almost hopeful.

She smiled, I could feel her smile. “Die,” she whispered. “To die and die and die.”

“Die and die and die,” I said.

And then we said it together, slow, like a prayer: “Die   and    die    and    die.”

The next morning I nibbled on her ear. I liked the water that came through, it tasted like quiet mornings: when we drank coffee on the couch and talked bad about our friends. We liked them, we did, but we knew our love was superior.

*

On the journey upward, toward the peak, there was no talking. We only thought about things that would never be.

I thought about my wife undressing and then dressing and then undressing.

*

The children were mostly lost. They were tired of climbing boulders and rereading the same books.

“They need open fields,” said my wife.

“The sun might hurt them,” I said. I couldn’t cry.

“Stars and suns,” she said. “Wouldn’t you know?”

*

The mountain’s peak was full of the four winds. Like our four children

they stretched us in opposite directions, tugging us, disrupting our conversation.

But the nights were calm and safe.

We camped for four days. I thought we may have been protected by some of the big birds flying below. Maybe the big birds were people with wings? People believe in all sorts of things.

“I used to play the saxophone,” my wife told me.

“I never understood jazz,” I said.

“You could dance,” she said.

“I was a real man! Prom Prince! Quarterback! Voted to be a Success!” “You slept in the boat at prom and didn’t even get laid!” she said. “Bwa! Haha!”

“Girls and boats,” I said.

When the sun was high, the four children blew against us. We could feel them pushing, a thrust that could only make us stagnant and worn out. Sometimes they tickled us to get our attention. Sometimes we wanted their attention, too.

On the fourth day we headed down the mountain, toward the rough white waters. When we were wet everything around tumbled and twirled. We met up with our old chickens and a baby goat named Francine. We were in the water together, tumbling through, wondering where the wet would lead us. We held hands and at some point, amidst the commotion, we acquired gills.

“Francine ate your flowers!” I said, bubbles bubbling. I was thinking of our place in the country.

“She chased our small children with her horns.”

“The children?” I asked. “Where did they go?”

“They are swimming with the eels. Don’t you know?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Their books will get moldy!”

“Can’t you hear them reading?”

“My ears?”

“Your ears are all that’s left of you,” she said. “What do you hear?” The things I hear I will never tell.

*

She collapsed when she got to the shore. She gently placed what was left of me on the beach. The sand scraped my soft skin. I was tender and hairless. I laid on the sand and cried, cried because of the hurt. Somewhere along the way, when I was young, I wasn’t admired as much as I wanted to be.

“Don’t fuss,” she said.

“If only I could sit up,” I said, wiping the tears off my sun burn.

“Here, I’ll hold you,” she said. “See, you can sit.”

She touched my eyes. I opened them but I wasn’t used to the light.

“Too bright,” I said.

“Do you still believe?” she asked.

“Believe?” I said. “Believe?”

“Believe,” she said. “Believe?” I said.

*

When the sun sank I tried again to open my eyes. The shapes tottered between trees and children.

We looked down at my knees. We wanted my legs to grow.

“We’ll wait,” she said. “There’s nothing to it.”

They started to grow. Legs. The children sat around and pointed and laughed. It was fun watching something like that.

“Will I crawl again?” I asked.

The children laughed. “Your legs grow like branches!” they shouted.

*

It was true, my legs came out like two twigs, green leaves sprouting at the feet.

“Can we use them to roast marshmallows?” asked my youngest son, or maybe it was my daughter.

“Not today,” said my wife. She was smiling and beginning to rest.

*

Over the next two years I walked slowly. At first I took to the flatlands like the dead. Over green hills I teetered.

“If you only knew how strong you once were,” said my wife as she yawned and stretched. She was finally awake from her long slumber.

We stood and stared at each other. She took out her braids.

“You can touch me,” she said.

I touched her hair and then I covered her eyes with my palms and played a game of peekaboo.

The children were in the caves reading.

“I hobble,” I said, running my fingers over her knuckles. “Listen!” she said. “You will run again!” “My legs,” I said, looking down at them.

She grabbed my hand. “I know it!” she shouted. “You’ll race!” “Who could ever know?” I said. “There’s nothing to it.”

“I don’t remember,” I said.

“Like this,” she said, letting me go, sprinting.

She wanted me to chase her.

Sometimes not even ravens can slow you. You run and fall on a pile of leaves. You rise, run again, curse the ravens, and shake the autumn out of your hair. But some leaves attach forever. You see her and do not want to lose her. Her long black hair. Her legs, so strong and pretty. Your children are on your back, the wind pulling their long hair.

You see her turn to look back at you.

“She sees you!” cry the children.

“Run to her!” cry the children.

She didn’t stop, she made me run faster and faster until my legs were full of bone and meat and blood. I ran through the night, there’s nothing to this running. Running is what I was made to do. I ran through deep waters, over several summits, and through desolate wastelands. She was so fast and strong, all the moving, all the chasing…

When I got close I almost touched her long black hair swinging back. I wanted her. I wanted to touch her. But she was so fast. She was too strong.

I’ve only begun this race, I thought.

When I stopped, I slouched. I put my hands on my knees and tried to catch my breath.

I placed the children under a tree and watched them breathe. I remembered how breathing gives life. I sat with my back against the tree.

“Giving up so soon?” said a pretty voice in a tree.

My wife was there, ravens in her hair.

“It’s you,” I said.

She unbuttoned her shirt and threw it in my face. The smell of the shirt was the smell of my wife!

I tied it around my bicep.

Climbing, I declared, “I am climbing again!”

Her black bra was hanging from a limb. I knotted the bra around my head and climbed higher with the thought of blood. The feeling of blood is the beginning of hope?

“I’m almost there!” I shouted.

But she was not there. She was in the sky, soaring, her breasts revealed in the moonlight. Her hair of ravens flying her to the moon, or to a place near the moon.

I sat on the tree and watched her fly.

My thought: She will never land, she will always fly.

“Oh, stop the dramatics!” she yelled from the sky.

“Why?”

“Give me a night in the sky to fly!”

“Fine! God! Fly! But what do I do without you?”

“Walk home, cook dinner, put the kids to bed.”

*

Tears trailed down the tree making puddles around the sleeping children’s feet.

“Oh,” I cried. “Now I remember everything.” The ravens laughed in the sky.

They said, “Why don’t you die?”

*

I remembered heat and sweat. I remembered swinging the axe on the farm. I walked the children home, to the old country house. Like good children they held my hand and sang a song about the wonderful and horrible things of life: twigs and legs and ravens and moons.

Francine the goat and the chickens were waiting for us in our living room. The place was spotless. I looked around, breathed the air, and told the children to keep themselves busy while I prepared the eggs and fruit and toast.

JP Vallières is from the Village of Adams. Some of his work can be found at Tin House, Winter Tangerine, and Santa Monica Review. He lives with Kimmy and their four sons in northern Idaho.